The Twilight series shows us very young people making very grave decisions on the strength of the love they feel for each other. Are we meant to think that they are old enough to judge their feelings accurately? If Bella thinks she’s too young to get married, is she old enough to be certain she loves Edward enough to give up her humanity for him? Can Jake really know he loves Bella, when he is only 16?

Of course these are all fictional characters from a world of monsters and magic, which raises a further question. Even if you think that Bella and Jake know what they are doing, do you think this is realistic for real life teenagers?

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Comments

well look at couples who were high school sweethearts and are now happily married. I dont think love depends on the age but the understanding of your true feelings. So no i dont think Bella and Jake are too young. Sorry for posting my answer here I dont feel like registering for the forum right now lol.

Yeah love is for all ages the heart was no limites. I think its okay even though i would really think threw about the man i going to marry. But yeah if the person really knows that person is their other half then yeah.

All of that sort of thing is just sooooo confusing. We all want to have our own Edward and think that no matter what, it might not work that way. Not to bring anyone down or anything.

The point is, that there are very rare cases when a teen finds LOVE, and not anything less. I think that most people (teens) can’t feel love until they are a lot older and have a better outlook on the difference.

Where as Bella and Edward have gone threw so much together already, they KNOW that they LOVE eachother. DUH!!!!

i do agree that high school relationships are usually on impulse but both Bella and Edward are more mature in a way. Edward has had 107 years to gain all his knowledge and Bella, even though she is young, she takes the motherly role to her own mother which to me is very mature. so i think they are old enough to understand that they were meant for each other. Plus we all know what happened to Bella when Edward left, and she would never be able to fill the love she got from him with another person.

I think that age shouldn’t matter just listen to your heart and pay attention to your feelings. Parents alwas say “You’re to young to know what love is” but I think as long as you know you love a person you can’t be to young.

(Sorry if this doesn’t make sense it is really early in the morning LOL)

I agree solidly with icky vicky and kelliexlr….VERY good points…and yeah, DUH lol. I don’t think age is an issue in this series. The things Edward and Bella have been through have strengthened them and their love for each other. It’s pretty easy to see that. (and I like how kellieexlr points out that Bella is quite mature for her age…18 going on 35 practically. And that’s why her mother wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear Bella was marrying Edward…Bella is very mature for her age, and knows her own heart). Edward is self-explainable. He’s a 107 year mind trapped in a 17 year old body. He has the wisdom and knowledge from those years, but he still has the yearnings that come from a 17 year old male body. When he refrains from certain things (that most 17 year old boys would NOT pass up lol), it just shows that he loves Bella and is constantly trying to do right by her…(even if he underestimates himself, which is most of the time haha) I could say more, but…I’ll wrap it up there. Age is not a problem in this series, I don’t think. They all learn lessons from their mistakes, and that’s good enough for me. None of them are perfect, and that’s alright. (Edward’s perfectly imperfect!) =)

Hello…Edward is is a vampire who lives forever and Jacob is a werewolve..it’s not supposed to be real but real life teenagers do have situations like this except it’s not being pushed to the extremities Bella and Jacob have to deal with since in there world vampires and werewolves exist with there own own problems…some teenagers do have to think about geting married at 18 mabey because there pregnant and practically all teenagers who find someone they like feel the need to dramatize it be claiming their love for someone while even if they do truely love that person it’s hard to tell since they got it on there first try…

Something I always thought to myself is that with love, age has no importance, but the strength of the love is the key to the relationship.

icky vicky totally captures the essence and the hilarity of the Twilight Saga; love is a very passionate, but fragile, emotion, and should not be taking lightly.

As for Bella and Edward, their love has overcome many obstacles, and though I am Team Edward straight up, Jacob still did help Bella in her GRAVE time of of need, and as Edward said, he sewed up Bella’s wounds, but it still left its remainders. Bella, anyways, loves Edward and Jacob COMPLETELY differently, so to confuse them would not only make no sense, but piss me off. 😉

I also agree with kelliexlr. Bella and Edward both have mature knowledge, and all-around feelings for a stable relationship, so why worry? And Jacob will most definitely imprint soon (he’d better) so although he and Bella still have feelings for one another, it will not be important, for they will have their own loves.

As a closing note, I would love to thank mogo1216 for this interesting topic- even though the answer seemed obvious to me, it still made me think!

i would just like to say that i HATE HATE HATE when people say “oh because someone’s young they don’t know about love” because in my opinion that is completely untrue.
not that i support jacob in any way as a love interest for bella against edward, but honestly, i think when you’re young love is so pure and innocent and yet so passionately filled with wild fire that its truly what love should be, without the responsibilities that adulthood thrusts upon you as you age.
i think that bella and edward’s love is true. truer than most love we see in reality. god i wish i could find that, i envy them so much.

I think teenagers should read this and NOT try and relate it to reality. Look at Romeo and Juliet – they met each other one night and fell in love. And supposedly they were “meant for each other”. Realistic at all? No. But look at the book – it’s a classic. Bella and Edward are fictional characters, who, yes, belong together. Their love is strong enough. But the only reason their love is strong and fiery enough is because they live in a fantasy world, and they are not real. Teenagers read Twilight because it IS so unrealistic – it allows them to disregard everything in their own life and, in some ways, create expectations that will never be met (for example: no female will ever be satisfied with a man after reading about Edward).

People like that don’t EXIST. While there is no question that the books are fantastic, they are extremely escapist and do not and SHOULD not be considered anything close to reality. Bella and Edward should fall in love, but in the real world no girl should sacrifice her family, former life, and humanity for one guy.

I think it is possible. There are many reasons why but my absolute favorite came from SM herself- on her website. She mentions that a lucky person gets to love hundreds of people on many different shades and depths, and that a fortunate person gets to learn to love better with practice.

I doubt younger people get to love on the level of Edward and Bella but I do believe that they can have at least some form of real love. You’ve gotta start somewhere and then allow it go grow up with you- learning from mistakes, practicing how to balance, exploring different kinds of love. Its something that takes time and experience but I dont see why its impossible to begin at a younger age- even if that beginning is as shallow as being in love with the IDEA of being in love- its a start.

i changed my mind i dont agree with icky vicky at all because love can be found at any age and some one who really loves another person can really feel it. you would only know if you felt it too and if you did fell it your whole say in this would be different so i would look at it in the point of veiw that the people in your class do. So dont judge by what u think

hey Icky Vicky dont be a hippocrit because u thought that u loved ur 1st boy toy Chad and you say that ur 6th grade class is dumb because they pretend to be characters from the book and u pretend to be Victoria so dont act like ur better than them when ur just like them

I learned from the mistakes of thinking that way! I’m a preteen and it is just too early for love… sorry to get off the subject and be personal…

But all of our points lead to the same thing… There are slim to none cases where teens have a Bella and Edward situation because i think we just don’t know what the difference is yet.

This is not the place to debate. That is what the forums are made for. I am entitled to my opinion no matter how much someone else dissagrees. This part of the site is to comment, not to debate. Like i said . That is what the forum is for.

If I may say so myself… I do belive that you might find love at Bella’s age but not Jake…. Hes only 16 amd hes bound to find some one else….. Bella has been with Edward for a wile and they have been through to many things to say that Bella doesn’t love Edward…

The Twilight series does show teenagers and the very serious life changing decisions that they make due to their relations with each other, however, within the series the characters do not have the privilege of being omniscient as we the readers are; often privy to both their thoughts and to knowledge that they do not have.

Whether or not their characters are old enough to be judged seriously or not is a understandable question, and the answer is that while in my personal opinion,they are, the answer is indeed irrelevant: for their story has been told, and they have taken the situations that they were given and done the best that they can with them.

People will not generally make the decision to stay away from a person due to the fact that their love may not be taken seriously by another, and in the face or their insurmountable love for each other, they choose to disregard both other’s opinions toward the in the fact of the question of their seriousness of their relationship at such a young age, and the opinions of those who do know of Edward’s secret and how that must affect their relationship, as well as the personal danger, both emotionally and physically that the relationship presents to them both.

This all plus the fact that he’s quite a bit older than he appears (^.~) as well as Bella’s fairly mature nature for her age, plus the fact that she must have a pretty good understanding of herself after everything that she’s gone through, and how much she’s questioned herself through all of it.

As far as Bella’s hesitancy upon the subject of marriage, much of it is due to her somewhat jaded views on marriage due to the way that her parent’s marriage turned out. Bella thinks that her mother in particular would be opposed to her marrying right out of hight school, due to her own mistakes, and being a character who worries about those around her, and their opinions, she would probably see this as a fairly valid reason to not get married. This, in my opinion at least has nothing to do with her feelings for Edward, and she does not ever seem to associate the two within the book.

The final point on the last question being: that this is a BOOK. Teenagers need to have the ability to read a story and be able to understand the differences between hat and reality, even if it is used as an escape method. The question of this being realistic is contradictory to the nature of the book as how many use it, as such: an escape method.

it’s an interesting question. isn’t the very nature of love itself subjective? it can mean something very different to every individual, so how can anyone claim to really know what love is or determine who is mature enough to love and who is isn’t?

this whole adult vs. teenager thing is sort of irrelevant, particularly when you consider the vast number of adults out there who don’t know what love is or how to love someone else. i think the ever-increasing divorce, violence, and child abandonment rates should be some indication of this. besides, there are a lot of teenagers out there who have better heads on their shoulders than some of the adults i know just regarding life in general. those “kids” certainly may have the ability to love in a deeper sense than messed up and jaded adults. stephenie even does a great job of providing this as sort of a fundamental of bella’s character by setting bella apart as a caretaker to both her mother and father. it’s true that this is a piece of fiction, but can anyone honestly say they don’t know someone like bella in real life?

the bottom line? love is what the individual makes of it, and no one person (or age group) holds stock in what love means or how it is experienced. so, can a teenager truly love someone? absolutely.

In Bella’s case I think that she and Edward have truly found true love in one another. Even though she’s 18, she was never a teenager like Jessica or even Angela or like us. She has always been the mature one between Renee and her, so I think she really does know what true love is.
As for Jacob, I think he’s still a little young for Bella and Edward’s kind of love. I’m sure he’s still in time to find true love with someone else and not live the rest of his life suffering Bella, after all, he didn’t imprint on her…